Scott Witter
July 26, 2017
In The Mix

Bound for Sound

An editor seeks visual metaphors for music.

Libby Slate

How do you pictorialize sound?

That was the challenge for Nancy Novack, who edited the first two episodes of the eight-part PBS documentary series Soundbreaking: Stories from the Cutting Edge of Recorded Music. The show, now available on DVD and iTunes, chronicles the development and art of music recording.

“We’re always looking for visual metaphors for sound, such as faders [sliders on a mixing console to control volume] and volume meters,” says Novack, who shared a 2007 Emmy for editing HBO’s When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts; her credits also include episodes of the PBS docu-series Cancer:The Emperor of All Maladies and Broadway:The American Musical.

Soundbreaking naturally features images of people thinking about sound. Novack drew from more than 160 interviews with music industry heavyweights and 12,000 archival still photos to help flesh out her episodes, selecting more than 200 images for each.

“The best stills are always the ones that show emotions or movement: singing, or something that shows the person is thinking about something,” she notes. “We have a gorgeous picture of Paul McCartney with his guitar, and one of [singer-producer] Sly Stone with a reel-to-reel playback tape, listening to what he’s created.”

Novack’s own musical experience was key: she was a dancer from age six to 21 and choreographed modern dance pieces and musicals in high school and college.

“I brought that to the table: dancing, hearing the music, hearing the pace, hearing it in my soul,” she says. Her desire to learn is as valuable as that innate sense of rhythm. “I always feel like I’m taking a graduate course in whatever the subject is,” Novack says. “The more inquisitive I can be, the better I can translate that to telling the story. I feel that what I find interesting, viewers will find interesting.” 


This article originally appeared in emmy magazine, Issue No. 5, 2017

Browser Requirements
The TelevisionAcademy.com sites look and perform best when using a modern browser.

We suggest you use the latest version of any of these browsers:

Chrome
Firefox
Safari


Visiting the site with Internet Explorer or other browsers may not provide the best viewing experience.

Close Window